> it must be possible to do in an environmentally conscious way. Or Australia's lithium mines have managed to fly under the radar of the environmentalists

Sadly, both don't seem to be true. Australia's lithium mining has a higher carbon footprint than others (3.4): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134492...

We has some of the highest CO2 emissions per capita, so it's not much of a surprise we are doing this inefficiently too.

> Also it is likely that, because of environmental regulations, it is not possible to mine the lithium economically. I haven't kept up, but the lack of lithium production in the US suggests that there are regulatory factors at play.

That's a large assumption to make without any investigation.

It would be. But I've made a lot of investigations.

{citation needed}

I've done modelling work for mine planning projects when people were deciding where to put a mine. Quite a lot of it.

Lithium has been a trendy commodity for years. If the US doesn't have a lot of active lithium mines - which it does not - it is going to be because of legislative impediments. Probably environmental ones. There aren't a lot of other reasons. It is common for environmental restrictions as the root cause of mines not being started, particularly in lithium from what I gathered.

You're not going to get a citation, this is literally just stuff I happened to know quite well a few years ago.

It's a pretty well understood fact that lithium processing has withered in the West because currently it's an extremely polluting process.